Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Dorine Koestler

4.3
Comment(s)
1.6M
View
25
Chapters

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey-her favorite drink-forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

Protagonist

: Elena Vitiello, Dante Moretti and Sofia

Chapter 1

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved.

He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again.

"Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports.

For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian.

In return, he treated me like furniture.

He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey-her favorite drink-forgetting that I despised the taste.

I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home.

So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco.

I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage.

But I underestimated Dante.

When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat.

He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

Chapter 1

Elena Vitiello POV

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved.

He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half the criminal underworld in New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again.

"Done," he said, his voice devoid of any emotion.

That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. The Reaper. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports.

I sat across from Mia in the high-security cafe, watching the rain streak against the bulletproof glass. My hands were folded in my lap, perfectly still. I was trained to be still. I was the Caged Canary, the silent Moretti wife.

"He signed them?" Mia whispered, her eyes wide with horror and a twisted sort of impressed disbelief. "Just like that?"

"He was distracted," I said softly. "Sofia was having a crisis about a broken heel or a chipped nail. I don't remember which."

Mia slammed her coffee cup down. "He is a monster, Elena. A blind, arrogant monster. You've been scrubbing his blood out of his shirts for three years. You saved his family's alliance when that little brat ran off with a civilian. And he treats you like furniture."

"Furniture is useful," I corrected her, taking a sip of my tea. It tasted like ash. "I am less than that. I am merely ornamental. A placeholder."

I looked out the window. A convoy of black armored SUVs glided to a precision halt at the curb. The pedestrians scattered like pigeons. They knew that formation. They knew who was inside.

Dante Moretti didn't just walk into a room; he conquered it. He was the most lethal predator in the city, a man who had taken over the New York Outfit's enforcement division at twenty-two and turned it into a machine of absolute terror. He had killed men for looking at me the wrong way, yet he couldn't look at me himself.

"He's here," I said.

Mia reached for my hand. "Do you have the exit plan?"

"San Francisco," I breathed. "Isabella secured the apartment. The flight is in two weeks. Until then, I play the part."

The cafe door opened. The air pressure in the room seemed to drop. Two soldiers walked in first, scanning the perimeter with cold, dead eyes. Then Dante entered.

He was wearing a charcoal suit that cost more than this building. His dark hair was swept back, revealing a face that was beautiful in the way a thunderstorm is beautiful-destructive and captivating. He walked straight to my table, ignoring everyone else.

"Elena," he said. It wasn't a greeting. It was a command.

"Dante," I replied, standing up smoothly.

"We are leaving. My mother expects us for dinner."

He didn't look at Mia. He turned and walked out, expecting me to follow. I always followed.

I gave Mia a small, sad smile and walked into the rain. A soldier held an umbrella over me, but Dante was already inside the SUV. I slid onto the leather seat beside him. The car smelled of expensive cologne, gun oil, and the faint, cloying scent of vanilla perfume.

Sofia's perfume.

The convoy started moving. The silence in the car was heavy, suffocating. Dante was typing on his phone, his brow furrowed.

"That file I signed weeks ago," he said suddenly, not looking up. "The vendor contract for the shipping lines. Did you file it?"

My heart slammed against my ribs. "Yes," I lied. "It's being processed."

He hummed, a low vibration in his chest. "Good. I don't want any loose ends before the transition."

He was becoming Don soon. He wanted a clean slate. I was giving him the cleanest slate possible-a life without me.

His phone rang. The ringtone was specific. It pierced the quiet like a siren.

Dante answered immediately. "Sofia."

I looked out the window, counting the raindrops.

"Slow down," Dante said, his voice shifting from cold command to something softer, something urgent. "Where are you? Who is there?"

He listened for a moment, his jaw tightening. The temperature in the car dropped ten degrees.

"I don't care who his father is," Dante snarled into the phone. "If he touched you, he loses the hand. Stay there. I'm coming."

He hung up. He tapped the partition glass. "Change of plans. Go to the Meatpacking District."

"Dante," I said quietly. "Your mother."

He finally looked at me. His eyes were like ice, blue and impenetrable. "Sofia is in trouble. Some street trash cornered her."

"She is a Capo's daughter," I said, my voice steady. "She has her own guards."

"She called me," he said, as if that explained everything. As if that justified stranding his wife in the middle of the city.

The car pulled over to the curb. It wasn't the estate. It was a street corner five blocks from our home.

"Take the second car back," Dante ordered. "I need the team with me."

He was kicking me out. To go save the woman who had left him at the altar, the woman whose mess I had cleaned up for three years.

I opened the door. The rain was coming down harder now.

"Dante," I said, pausing with one foot on the pavement. "You signed the papers."

He looked at me, impatient, his mind already on her. "I know, Elena. You told me."

"I just wanted to make sure you remembered," I said.

I stepped out. The door slammed shut behind me, and the convoy sped away, tires spraying dirty water onto my shoes. I stood there for a moment, watching the taillights disappear, realizing that for the first time in three years, I didn't feel the sting of tears. I just felt cold.

Continue Reading

Other books by Dorine Koestler

More
His Obsession, My Hell

His Obsession, My Hell

Romance

5.0

My marriage to David Miller was a picture of perfection, a dream life built on his charm and our shared happiness. Then came the call: my mother in an accident, and David, my husband, utterly unreachable. Hours bled into sterile dread in the hospital waiting room, a dread far deeper than my mother' s condition. An unknown text arrived, a single photo: David, arm around another woman, intimate, familiar. It was my aunt, Sophia Hayes, my mother' s estranged sister, her smile painfully like mine. My world, once perfect, splintered into a million icy shards under the humming hospital lights. He returned late, weaving slick lies about dead phones and urgent meetings, as if I were a child to be placated. But as he signed the papers I put before him, oblivious, a chilling sense of irony settled heavy in my gut. The man I thought I knew, the husband who murmured of naming our child "Sophia," was a stranger. I found his study, not an office, but a shrine to her, filled with desperate letters and a diary detailing his monstrous plan: I was just a "perfect-looking replacement" to bear "his Sophia." The love, the marriage, the baby-all a grotesque fabrication, designed to resurrect his lost obsession. The pain threatened to split me, but beneath it, a cold, hard resolve began to form, sharper than any grief. He thought he' d signed investment papers; he' d signed his divorce, and my consent to end the lie he' d so carefully constructed within me. I walked out that night, leaving his diary open, his delusion exposed, ready to erase every trace of his monstrous fantasy.

The Secret Genius Ex-Wife's Cold Revenge

The Secret Genius Ex-Wife's Cold Revenge

Modern

5.0

I spent three years playing the role of the perfect, invisible wife to Dillard Bentley, the billionaire heir of Manhattan. While he graced the tabloids with socialites, I stayed in the shadows of our penthouse, waiting for a man who treated me like a piece of furniture. One rainy night, the facade finally shattered. Dillard came home smelling of another woman’s perfume, and I handed him the divorce papers he never expected. But before the ink could dry, a violent pain ripped through me during a family lunch, and I collapsed in a pool of blood on the pristine marble floor. While I was being rushed to the hospital, Dillard’s mother dismissed my agony as a manipulative trick, and Dillard chose to believe her. He didn't follow the ambulance; he went to a gala to protect his mistress instead. I woke up in a cold emergency room only to be told I had lost the baby I didn't even know I was carrying. Because of the toxic "vitamins" his mother had been force-feeding me, my blood wouldn't clot, and I had to undergo surgery without a single drop of anesthesia. I bit down on a leather strap, feeling every agonizing scrape as they cleared the remains of my child, while my husband laughed at my pain over the phone. "Stop the drama, Erica. Tell her the divorce terms are non-negotiable. I'm busy." He hung up, leaving me to scream in silence. I realized then that the man I had once loved was the same man who let his family poison me. The "vitamins" weren't supplements; they were a death sentence for my unborn child, and he didn't even care enough to show up. Dillard thinks he’s divorcing a penniless nobody, but he’s about to find out that the world-renowned medical genius he’s desperate to recruit is the wife he left to bleed alone. I walked out of that hospital, threw my wedding ring in the trash, and reclaimed my true identity. Dr. N is coming to the global summit, and I’m not there to save the Bentley empire—I’m there to burn it to the ground.

One Night With The Rival Alpha

One Night With The Rival Alpha

Werewolf

5.0

My mother had been dead for four years, and my father, the Alpha of our pack, was now a hollow shell controlled by his new wife, Marley. I was a ghost in my own home, watching from the shadows as they celebrated a wedding that felt more like my execution. During the reception, Marley cornered me and demanded my mother's last heirloom-a blood-red ruby-to pay off her family's secret gambling debts. When I refused, her guards pinned me down, and in the struggle, the ancient stone hit the marble floor and shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Framed for grand larceny by my own stepmother, I fled to a dive bar and sought refuge with Caleb Sterling, a rival Alpha who radiated power and danger. We spent a night of soul-shattering passion that I was certain was our mate bond, but the next morning, he tossed an envelope of cash at me and called me a high-end escort. When the police arrived to arrest me, he simply stepped aside and watched them drag me away in handcuffs, cold and indifferent to my screams. "Do what you have to do," he had told the officers, his eyes devoid of any warmth. I was a fugitive, stripped of my title, and discovered I was carrying Caleb's child-a baby cursed by his bloodline to never survive the womb. I couldn't understand why my father had abandoned me to a monster, or why the man I was destined for had sold me out just to save his own reputation. After a brutal ambush that left my only friend in a burning wreck, I stood at the border of the forbidden North. I clutched the jagged shards of my mother's ruby and looked the Northern Warlord in the eye, ready to trigger a war that would burn my father's legacy to the ground.

You'll also like

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book